


not even a footnote in history

by silverhedges



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Hobbit Courting, Hobbit Culture & Customs, M/M, mentions of the simarillion, starts really fluffy ends up really angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2017-07-13
Packaged: 2018-12-01 16:30:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11490270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverhedges/pseuds/silverhedges
Summary: The House of Beorn is where the dwarves, the wizard and the hobbit have their first real conversation. It is also their last.Alternatively: Fili and Kili get started on their secret plan of matchmaking.





	not even a footnote in history

Bilbo is becoming worried at how easily he has become accustomed to the dwarves. For all the long years of his life since his parents passed he lived alone in Bag End, and the silence was more than enough to him. Comforting, even. Compared to the hubble and bubble of Brandybuck Hall, silence was a blessing.

Now he felt differently. Thirteen dwarves and a wizard and they all never seemed to shut up. Bilbo is either drawn into one conversation or having to break up an argument or consulted on gossip, or just having to sit back and reconcile himself to the fact that they are all such a massive smelly bunch of _children_. Or the fact that his natural role is the snarky mother of the group.

It is night-time and long after dinner (he is still mourning the lack of supper) and they are all settling into sleep. Beorn has provided them all with thick furs and straw to sleep on. Bilbo wonders for a moment where the furs came from and then decided not to pursue that avenue. He doesn’t want to find out that he’s sleeping with the skins of Beorn’s dead friends pulled over him.

Thorin is looking a little more alive rather than a dead man walking as he had before. Oin fusses over him but Thorin is attempting to bat him away and use his sternest King face. Bilbo watches him, a fond smile tugging at his mouth.

“Mr Boggins!” chorus two sly, sing-song voices.

Bilbo doesn’t have to turn to know it’s the devil brothers. How are they not twins? “Fili, Kili,” he greets, turning and raising an eyebrow. “What bother have you two gotten into this time.”

“Weelllllll,” Kili starts, shit-eating grin splitting his face. “Me and Fili were jus’ wondering…”

“Get to it, Kili.”

“…if you would tell us about Hobbit courting customs?”

Dwalin chokes on air at the other side of the room and starts coughing enormously. Balin politely whacks him on the back.

Bilbo frowns. “Should I ask why on earth you want to know?”

“Mr Bilbo,” Ori pipes up, his earnest face bright. “I’m sure we want to know more about hobbit culture! All this time it’s just been us talking about ourselves and we haven’t tried to learn anything of your ways at all, friend!”

A general murmur of agreement passes around the room. Kili and Fili loudly exclaim their agreement. Bilbo catches Bofur’s eye and gives him a despairing look; his friend chortles at his misery and smokes more of his pipe. Bilbo doesn’t dare to look in Thorin’s direction, but his traitorous heart still wonders if Thorin wants to know about hobbit courting customs.

Bilbo shifts. “It’s hard to know where to start,” he admits. “It’s just all so normal to me. Like trying to explain second breakfast! If you had any questions?”

“What kind of rites are there?” Kili chimes in. “Like, how does one go confessing their love?” and waggles his eyebrows in a truly disturbing manner.

Bilbo stares at him. “Uh. Kili. If you love someone, you just tell them. No, uh, rites needed.”

The dwarves stare at him like he’s suddenly turned into an elf.

“But how does your lover know you’re worthy of them?” Dwalin asks in his gruff, booming, plaintive voice.

“If they love you back, they’ll think you’re ‘worthy’”, Bilbo chuckles. Oh, dwarves. He assumes this has something to do with their sense of honour. “And if they don’t, they don’t.”

“What do you mean if they _don’t_?” Fili slowly says.

Bilbo is confused. “Not everyone loves everyone… back? The hearts of hobbits are like the hearts of Men: fickle as the wind. And if you fall in love with someone once you’re already married, well. There’s plenty of divorces and affairs abound in Hobbiton.” He’s quite glad to have left all that nonsense behind. “And we’re all very inter-related in the Shire, so it’s no real problem who’s the kids are as long the mother’s family are alright with it.”

“So hobbits don’t have a One?!” Ori squeaks, horrified. Bilbo would have inquired as to what a ‘one’ is, except all the dwarves immediately shushed Ori and started looking shifty, like when they speak in their secret language.

Out of the corner of his eye, Thorin looks heartbroken.

Bilbo shrugs. “The most important thing in Hobbit courting customs is having plenty of kids. So it’s generally you confess, you try to get their family’s good side as best as you can, you get married and then you have lots and lots of kids.”

Looking from dwarf to dwarf, it’s like he had just told them all hobbits are secretly Elf-worshippers and are only into people over six foot. Their stunned looks of horror, disbelief and sickness are enough to make him take pity. Bilbo did have good reasons for running off as wildly as he did, although he has to say that this is an overreaction.

“We do, however,” he adds with a smile. “Have a secret language of our own when it comes to courting.”

“What?” the dwarves ask in union, leaning forward.

“Flowers,” Bilbo replies and laughs loudly at their scorning groans of disappointment. “Don’t groan! They’re very important when you’re getting married. “

He catches Thorin’s gaze by accident. The exiled King has a wistful look on his face as he watches Bilbo, one that is replaced by a small smile when Bilbo notices. Bilbo smiles at him in return.

“When you get married,” Bilbo continues. “Your closest family has to weave your wedding crowns out of flowers. Flowers grown by the family you’re marrying, by the way. So if I’m explaining it right, the groom’s family will make his crown out of flowers grown by the bride’s family and vice versa.”

“Your mother’s flowers were quite unique, if I remember,” Gandalf muses in the corner of the room. Everyone looks at him in surprise; they had all forgotten the wizard was there, so long he had remained quiet. “You are your mother’s son, Bilbo.”

“Yes, they were,” Bilbo agrees, lost in stories and smiling.

“What were they?” Fili asks very softly. There is a gentle look in his dark eyes. Is he thinking of his own mother, back in Ered Luin?

Bilbo nods towards Gandalf. “When my mother was young, she was kidnapped on an awful adventure by a certain meddling wizard –“

“Belladonna insisted on going,” Gandalf interrupts.

“Belladonna,” Thorin echoes to himself. “A beautiful name.”

Caught off guard, Bilbo blinks at him. “Yes, she was very beautiful. Black hair, blue eyes, a typical Took, you know.” A murmur goes round the dwarves; he ignores it. “ _Anyway._ She had plenty of adventures in Rivendell, with the elves—“ a groan goes up around the room, “ _Master. Dwarves._ Either I am telling this story or I am not. You can all pretend to know all about hobbits.”

They all look suitably chastised.

Satisfied and internally sighing at his position as the Mother Friend, Bilbo continues, “So when she met my father, she decided that just any old Took flowers wouldn’t do. So she rode back to Rivendell, and gathered flowers from the garden of Elrond himself.” He finishes it there, sighing slightly.

“And that’s supposed to be _romantic_?” Dwalin raises an eyebrow. Balin shoots Bilbo an apologetic look and whacks his younger brother once more.

“It’s very romantic indeed, thank you very much Master Dwarf,” Bilbo says tartly. “If I am ever married, I shall only accept flowers from the gardens of Lothlorien.”

At once, Thorin, Dwalin and Balin devolve into hissed whispers in their secret language; nearer to Bilbo, Fili and Kili do the exact same in the exact same language. Bofur and Bombur start giving each other sly looks and peering into their wallets. Oh, confound these dwarves! Bilbo never knows if he’s upsetting them or not.

“Well, that’s my customs,” he huffs. “Do I dare to ask you dwarves about yours?”

The dwarves fall silent, looking at one another uneasily.

“No, don’t bother,” Bilbo remarks testily. “You can scoff at my culture all you wish, but I am to know nothing of yours. I see how it is.”

“Master Baggins,” Thorin begins, voice throaty and deep. The dwarves fall into a different silence, like they had in the first evening at Bag End. A silence full of respect and love. “I was wondering if you would tell us all about…” he pauses, trying to find the words, “where do Hobbits go when they pass from this earth?”

“When they die, you mean,” Bilbo says softly and Thorin inclines his noble head. He has so many different braids in his silver-and-black hair. Bilbo longs to know what they all mean, but he knows that it isn’t his place to ask. “No worries, Thorin. My time shall hopefully be a long time hence!”

They all laugh, half-afraid. If they escaped death in the nick of time against Orcs alone, how in this good earth will they all be able to face a dragon and live?

Bilbo pauses. “There are secrets we don’t share to outsiders as well,” he admits. “Such as where hobbits come from. But we share the same fate as Men.”

“The Gift of Death.” Gandalf’s voice is heavy and when they all look at him, it shows on his face as well. Every line seems carved into him, the burden of years clear to show. Bilbo shivers. Gandalf is a mysterious man, and even he does not know how long Gandalf has lived. He does not want to wonder.

“There is no gift in death, Mithrandir,” Thorin says darkly.

Gandalf huffs. “It is a gift you dwarves are too young to appreciate,” he reprimands. Thorin is nearly two hundred, and Gandalf thinks him _young_? “We are all tied to this world, and to its inexorable decline and wasting. When the dwarves pass on, you will go to Aule’s—“

“ _Mahal,”_ the dwarves chorus as one, somehow managing to each achieve the same tone of offended anger.

“When you go to his halls, you are still in this world. And here, linked to the stone, you dwarves shall remain. Mr Baggins, meanwhile, has a chance to escape this world and go to places even the Valar do not know of.”

The dwarves turn as one to gaze at Bilbo. It is as if they see him in a new, sad light.

Kili leans over and grasps Bilbo’s hands. “So when we die, we shall be parted for ever, Mr Boggins?” There is a look of genuine sorrow in his young eyes.

Bilbo smiles and grasps Kili’s hands in turn and tries to think of something reassuring to say. Then he realises he cannot; Kili had spoken the truth. Ah. It was a truth he had not realised until this moment, either. “I suppose so, Kili,” he says slowly. “I guess we shall have to treasure each moment we have with each other right now, as it happens.”

“Oh, Mr Boggins!” Fili cries and joins his hands on top of Kili’s.

“If it helps,” Bilbo says lightly. “You shall both long outlive me. Hobbits do not live as long as dwarves, you know.”

“Mr Bilbo, that does not help at all,” Ori says sadly.

“How long?” Thorin demands, voice breathless. Bilbo can only glance at those blue eyes, full of despair before it’s due. “How long do you have left?”

Bilbo bites down the instant desire to make a quip about the dragon (not appropriate, Lobeila’s voice says in his head), and calculates instead. If his grandfather lived so long… “Do not be worried, Master Dwarf. About fifty years or so?”

A horrified gasp goes up around the room.

Bilbo detaches himself from Fili and Kili and places his hand in his pocket. His thumb traces the edge of the ring. Fifty years is a long time to a hobbit. It would be enough.

“Mr Bilbo,” Ori pipes up and Bilbo turns to look at him. He seems so fragile. Bilbo has wondered many times what he’s doing on this quest. “When we have reclaimed Erebor, I will write down all your heroic deeds. And then you will be remembered forever.”

“Included in your dwarven history?” Bilbo raises an eyebrow sceptically.

“Dwarves have always been very welcoming towards outsiders,” Fili says pretend-sagely, and ignores all the incredulous looks sent his way.

“Aye, laddie. We will include ye,” Balin says, an almost gentle, fatherly tone to his voice. But looks can be deceiving. “The legends of the thirteen dwarves and a hobbit that reclaimed our kingdom from the dragon.”

The conversation devolves from there into the dwarves muttering and sighing over how rich they are going to be. Bilbo ignores them and tries to think about dragon and about how _big_ they must be. How smelly. How scaly. Full of fire in their best and eager to eat up little hobbits. Basically a massive armoured, fire-breathing wolf.

“Gandalf,” he asks, an old memory rising to the surface of his mind, “Wasn’t there a legend of a Man who killed a dragon?”

Gandalf sighs. “A very foolish Man.”

“A Man?” Dwalin asks. “We aint ever heard of a Man killing a dragon.”

“That is because, Master Dwarf, you all pay very little attention to history that is not Dwarven,” Gandalf replies. The smoke around his head makes him look like a wizard out of a dream; like they are in a real legend and not just a desperate company playing make-believe against impossible odds.

“Too many times elves have tried to scrub dwarves out of history,” Balin comments and Thorin nods his head in agreement.

Gandalf bows his head. “You would do well to learn from their mistakes, my friends. Elves live long lives. So many chances to make mistakes and so many chances taken. Dwarves are not the only race to fall prey to the lure of gold. Indeed,” and for some reason, Bilbo can feel Gandalf’s gaze upon him, “I would say that every race falls prey to that temptation. What we all would do for a little piece of gold is… abominable.”

“I would gladly take any story about the greed of elves.” Thorin crosses his bandaged arms stiffly over his chest. “But I do not agree with you, Mithrandir. We are trying to reclaim our home. Not just a little piece of gold; the richest kingdom there is. The renewal of our people!”

“And yet, how little it all means,” Gandalf muses lowly. “I worry about you, Thorin Oakenshield. I truly do.”

A silence fell upon the room. Outside, the sun was long gone and the darkness reigns. Inside, they are all cosied up in warm furs, full of food. The only requirement left for a good day tomorrow is have plenty of sleep. All at once, they all seem to acknowledge this and turn to their respective make-shift beds to fuss over it. A better day tomorrow, they all said to themselves. The last candles are extinguished.

Gandalf sits smoking, looking out into the deep dark night.

“Bilbo,” comes Thorin’s sleepy voice.

“Yes?”

“Lothlorien flowers, did you say?”

“Ah, yes.”

“Duly noted.”

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, Bilbo is the Mom Friend, but the Mom Friend of a terribly reckless group.
> 
> I wrote this after finishing the Silmarillion. It struck once I had finished it how small and pointless the quest of the Hobbit was, the first Tolkien book I read, a long time ago when I was a wee kid. In the scope of this entire world, reclaiming Erebor just doesn’t mean much. And the thought that all their sacrifices and pain and blood shed for this mountain – and history will barely remember it at all, because it didn’t accomplish much. And yet Bilbo, their smallest member, carries the fate of the entire world on his shoulders. That Irony is so delicious and yet heart-breaking.


End file.
